


Lonesome Dove

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [3]
Category: Country Music RPF, Orville Peck - Fandom
Genre: 1900s, Chicago, F/M, Job Interview, Prostitution, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:40:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Behind the Mask: Chicago, 1908, and Orville Peck is interviewing at the most prestigious House in the district.
Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709713
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Lonesome Dove

The terrible blankness of his masked face is a shock as cold as the wind from the Atlantic. Fear clenches her hand on the bronze door-handle, slams her feet to the floorboards and snaps her eyes down after them, as if the man behind the mask might see more than she wants to give.

Beyond the beaded toes of her slippers a Persian rug unrolls to the warm mahogany footings of the bar, to the fine, thin legs of the bar stool and the pair of leather boots posed on the rungs of it. Long legs, spread. Slim hips, a fancy waistcoat, a shirt of some soft material that clings like silk, but refracts the soft light of the gas lamps as if it is cotton. A man, just as every other man, just as willing to be led by the flesh between his legs.

The man says, unmoved, "Do that again. Make an entrance."

The mask covers the whole of his face from hairline to neckline, black as midnight. Silk twill, motionless, covers his mouth and chin. There is no warming appraisal, no hint of lust, no indication of a willingness to flirt or laugh or _show a girl a good time, dearie_. Nothing at all resembling the brief spurt of erotic assessment she had expected.

"Do it again," he says. His voice is deep, and there is an odd lilt to it, but every accent is unfamiliar in this new world and all men are the same in the dark. 

She closes the door, takes a deep breath, ribcage straining against the bones of her corset. This is her one chance, and she will own it. 

She opens the door. She is smiling already, a sweet hint of a smile, demure and knowing, that combination of innocence and allure that she knows to be her most potent lure. That, and the shadowed, inviting cleavage between her firm, high breasts, and the smooth promise of the sway of her hips under the long full fall of her skirt as she crosses the room. She is the most beautiful girl in the world, and she knows it, but her beauty is a fragile thing to be won and plundered. Her eyelashes are down, there is only the shadow of a dimple in her cheek, and when she reaches the bar she makes of herself an sinuous invitation, and not a blatant certainty.

"Better," he says. "Do it again. Don't turn your back on me." The silk of the fringe of his mask barely moves. 

She does it again. 

"Good. Now, lean a little towards me. Not too much." 

Light spills through her lace wrapper, patterning the top of her breasts, highlighting her smooth skin. She drops her eyelashes, bites her lip, looks up.

He snorts. "Bravo, sweetheart," he says. "That's your hook, right there." 

He says it casually, as if they're on the same side of the street, but they're not. She's the whore and he's the john. That's how it goes. 

"Hey," he says. "The catch is, it's the easiest thing in the world to spread your legs. Here, your worth lies in more than your cunt. I'll tell you a secret," he says. "Every man - every man jack of us - we're selfish fellas. We don't want to be alone. So, for an hour, or an evening, you're going to be a friend. An audience. A companion. A performer. It is in conscious entertainment that this house rests its reputation, and you need to bring more than the way you look on your knees."

"I've never yet recited Whitman in bed," she says.

"Well, sweetheart, maybe you've been fucking the wrong men," he says. 

"Well, sweetheart, maybe you haven't been fucking any," she snaps back, too quickly, too smartly, when - "Oh, _darn_ it," - she needs to present herself as the obedient odalisque, not the rebellious runaway. "Sorry," she says, angry with both of them.

He says, "Be careful who you talk back to, in this house. Spirit is fine. Rudeness is not. The door's right there."

"Thanks," she mutters.

"Don't get me wrong," he says. "You know you're sitting on your fortune. Learn to guild that lily, and they'll remember your name as well as your face. That's why this house is the best."

"Elocution lessons," she mutters. "Dance lessons. Piano lessons." But he is not lying.

"Recital lessons," he says, and at last, there is the shadow of amusement in his voice. The silk twists of his mask shimmer. "C'mon, sweetheart. Show me what I'm paying for."

The entry fee alone for the house is fifty dollars. Further, more personal negotiations, are extra. There are girls down the street turning tricks for a dollar; sixty men a night. She snaps her fingers and sticks out her chest, smiles sweet as cherry pie. "Darlin'," she drawls. "Darlin', I'ma gonna show you _heaven_."

For a moment, he is perfectly still, so that she wonders if she has taken that step too far - the accent, the assumption - and then his hat dips, and under the brim of it the fringe of the mask ruffles and sways, as if the person behind it has laughed. "Well," he says, "It's a start."

"Oh, ya think?" she says, on firmer ground now, and leans towards him, smile curling upwards, neckline sliding downwards, a single tendril of her piled-up curls falling onto one shoulder. "I've a line in attitudes," she whispers. "Like Lady Hamilton. I can be your Salome, draped in veils: I can be your Venus, jewelled as the queen of heaven, I can be your Primavera, rising naked as the day I was born from the spume of the waves..." She has let the tone of her voice drift into a husky alto. "After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality and so on - have found that none of these satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains?" Her smile is slow, and explicit. "Nature remains." If he wants Whitman, he can have him; if he were any other man, she would have her hand on his thigh, progressing at speed towards a natural state of nudity.

"Hot damn," he says, and there is, there really is a breath of a laugh behind the words, as if he is a real man after all. "You're somethin' special, ain't you?"

Her wrap stands in for the modesty of waist-length hair as she poses, clothed, as an art deco nude fresh from a Tiffany studio, the strategic decoration of her hands drawing attention to all the right places. A literary man might recognise the Whitman, a New York magnate the posture, and the price ticket.

"Worth every dollar," she says.

"Right on."

There is irony in his voice, as if he knows what it is to set a value on your own flesh. But they are not and never will be sisters under the skin. She says, "What are the house rules about clothing? Is there a particular style? Is there a seamstress? How much do I pay for laundry?" She meets the blank stare of the mask straight on.

If there is a face behind the mask, he is meeting her eyes. He says. "This house has standards. If your interview is successful, you will dress with style during the day, and at night. Your nightwear should be exquisite. French, if possible. The house is open for appointments with couturiers and milliners one afternoon a week. If you do not have a personal maid already, one will be assigned to you. She will liaise with maintenance staff. Mending, laundry, and sundries are not your concern."

"Don't just hoist your skirt and bend over," she says. 

"Not unless your guest desires urgency," he says. "In this house it's preferable you use your mouth. It's safer, and not something he'll get at home. But, if he wants, you will welcome his attentions elsewhere. In every particular. Raise your skirt. And bend over."

This, she had expected. She gathers up the heavy fabric of her skirt and bends over the bar, spreading her legs. Under her petticoats she is naked, and shaved. 

He does not move. Any other man - all other men have stared, fingered, shoved themselves inside - and he does not move. The mahogany of the bar is cool and smooth against her cheek, faintly scented with beeswax; the heavy press of the rose potpourri air in the room, with its ruched, drawn blinds and closed shutters, weighs on her back, on the piled-up fabric of her skirt, on her bared and vulnerable skin.

Instead, hat tipped, head down, he pulls on a pair of silk gloves, smoothing them down finger by finger. Then he moves. He has the conscious showmanship of someone who uses their body for a living, forever on display: the way he stretches the length of his legs and the supple twist of his hips, the deliberate placement of his boots, with their tooled leather and shaped heels, and the high, round shape of his buttocks in pants cut for artistry and not for comfort. For a moment she, too, is seduced, and then light ripples over the fringe of his mask and makes endless, black pits of the eyeholes. She turns her face away, and hears the heavy tap of his boot heels. Three steps. Fabric rustles.

He says, "Neatly shaved. That was you?"

"Yes," she says. She can feel his breath on her cunt, warm and moist. He does not touch her.

"Good. Any discharge? Aside from your courses." 

"No," she says. He does not touch her. 

"You like this," he says.

She does. She does. She can feel herself heating, the slick moisture starting in her cunt, her body becoming heavier and looser, opening, hungry. She says, "Yes."

He cups her whole cunt in his hand, fingers hard against her pudenda, palm pushed against her vulva, the silk soaking through so that his skin is cool against the heat of hers. His fingers are at just the wrong angle. She rocks against his touch, twists and thrusts, and then there is nothing for her to thrust into, just emptiness. She's on tiptoe. Moisture is beading on her cunt. He does not -

He pushes two fingers into her cunt, thick and hard. Wet silk drags at her insides. He pushes her open, pressing up into her, expecting her body to accommodate his, as if he has paid for the use, and her body does, opening for him, slicking his fingers, heating. He crooks his fingers, spurring into her, and she cries out. "Oh, oh, oh," she gasps, against the polished bar.

"What, no Whitman?" he says. His hand stills: his finger twist and rock inside her, as if her body could be made to encompass his touch, his knuckles, his fist. 

"Just the...treacherous tip," she gasps.

"Not from me, sweetheart," he says, "But nice try." 

Abruptly, he pulls his fingers out. Her treacherous body yearns after them, shaking and open, and when he runs his gloved thumb along the swollen, wet line of her cunt she finds herself straining after that touch. He says, "Good. Hold that pose." 

She does, back arched, buttocks in the air, aching. 

He says, "Perfect," and breaches her ass in one careful, implacable thrust. 

It hurts. She holds the pose. He must have his thumb up inside her, deep and thick, a painful stretch. She holds the pose. 

He says, "Stretch yourself here, every night. Clean yourself out. Use vaseline, after."

Her legs ache. Her body is heavy with arrested desire. She says, "Yes."

Without the easing of lubricant, he thrusts inside, once, twice, turns his thumb so her body stretches, each motion a small bright reminder of pain. He says, "Use a douche. Every night, without fail. Keep your sponges clean and fresh. The doctor will inspect you twice a week. Any sores, any pain, anything unusual - tell the maid."

"Yes," she says.

He pulls his thumb out, and her body takes its time closing, as if he holds her open still. The hard wood of the bar braces her knees. Eyes open, she can see the condensation her own breath leaves on the polish, and then the silk gloves he unrolls from his fingers, stained and damp, abandoned, used, limp. The hat brim dips. When he sits down, his knees are spread, his fingers on the brass buckle of his belt. 

"Suck me off," he says. 

When she stands, her legs have steadied, and her skirt shakes into place as efficiently as it always has. "No insult meant," she says, and raises an eyebrow at the flat placket of his denim pants. "But are you sure?"

"No insult meant," he says, "But if you can't deal with a limp dick, this isn't the job for you."

Because she is angry - she is always angry - she shimmys down to the rug, and crawls to his boots with the sinuous floor-show of a dancer, every move calculated. She does not take her eyes off the mask, and he does not move, which she scores as a win. When she unwinds herself between his knees, and runs her thumbs up the inner seam of his pantaloons, and bites her lower lip and leaves it reddened and wet and glistening, he fumbles his belt buckle. She does not help. He unbuttons one-handed, and the fastenings fall apart as well-worn as if he strips for a living, but his dick is pale and uncut and flops out on his thigh with the sad and hopeful pathos of a spent sperm whale. 

She sucks it up, unhesitating, to the root. That soft, she can curl her tongue under and rub the entire length against the ridges of the roof of her mouth, play with the wrinkled, soft hood of his fore-skin, delve into the acorn-smooth bell-end and swirl it in her throat. Then she hollows her cheeks and fucks down on him, taking control, dragging lust out of him, demanding it, stroke after stroke as if he was hard to bursting and not half-way there. She does not take her eyes off the mask. 

He has tucked his thumbs into his belt and gripped his hands there, a courtesy she did not expect and resents, because she neither wants nor needs to like a client. His job is to get hard and get off: hers, to facilitate, with all the skill she possesses, disregarding the ache in her jaw and her stiffening knees. Every trick she's ever learnt, every man who told her to open up and take it, or suck the tip, or run your teeth up the vein - gently! - every trick, she spends on him, until she wonders if he is one of those hateful clients who plan to waste a working girl's time. She swallows him down, all the same, time after time, and every faint quiver is a angry triumph.

"Enough," he says.

She's failed. She closes her eyes, pulls off, would like to spit onto the Persian rug. Doesn't. He shifts, buttoning up. 

Then he says, "You did well." He says, "I'll let the owner know. You'll be a asset to the house." 

He says. "Don't take it to heart. It's not your job or mine to finish."

She looks up. But she cannot see his face behind the mask, and it is unreadable.


End file.
